The Gumshoe

Character Sheet

Gumshoe's Myspace Page

Background / History

NAME: Frankie Fatale “The Gumshoe”

BORN: 11 November, 1910, Brooklyn, NY

DIED: 16 January, 1952, Detroit, MI

RESURRECTED: 31 October, 1995,

Millennium City

HEIGHT: 5’ 10”

WEIGHT: 13kg

HAIR: N/A

EYES: N/A

EDUCATION: Catholic high school, Fordham (B.A., History), and the mean streets

MILITARY SERVICE: Jan. ’42 – Aug. ’45; Paratrooper with the 101st Airborne; some work in Europe with the OSS; mustered out as a 1st Lieutenant

OCCUPATION: Private Investigator

BACKGROUND: Francis “Frankie” Fatale was an orphan, taken into the care of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New York City in 1910. He grew up in the orphanages and Catholic schools of Brooklyn, getting into his share of minor troubles, but usually in an attempt to look out for the other kids. Frankie’s antics didn’t prevent him from making friends with some of the higher-ups in the archdiocese, and upon graduating from high school he was given the chance to attend Fordham University.

He was expected to eventually enter the priesthood, but upon graduation, Frankie convinced his mentors to allow him to join the New York City Police force. Officer Fatale performed well, looking after his beat during the worst of the Depression and making his way up to the Detective Division faster than many of his peers. Frankie took a philosophical view of supers during this period, figuring that they weren’t the only ones who were equipped to look out for those in need.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Frankie, without wife or children, volunteered for duty, eventually winding up as a paratrooper in the fledgling 101st Airborne Division. He saw some of the worst fighting in Europe, and even conducted a number of missions with the OSS after the Battle of the Bulge. Frankie mustered out of the Army as a Lieutenant, but he found that his old detective job wasn’t waiting for him when he returned. He took his back pay and opened his own private investigation firm in the city.

Frankie quickly became known as the best human private eye in Golden Age New York City. His sense of honor would occasionally get him into scrapes, especially with the ladies, but it also translated into a lucrative professional ethic. In his short career, Frankie worked for all sorts of clients: rich and poor, obscure and famous, supers and normals. His last client was a wealthy industrialist who needed someone outside of his firm to retrieve an experimental trigger for a new generation of anti-matter bombs. This trigger used two alien 64-carat gemstones as ultra-capacitors, and many suspected that the stones (about which very little was known save that they had been mined from the core of an asteroid) were unstable. The MGFN-Mark 3 device proved to be the end of Frankie Fatale.

After Frankie took possession of the device following a late-night exchange in the back alleys of Detroit, he hid the trigger in a place only he knew about. The very next day, as he was returning to his hotel, an unknown assailant gunned him down from behind.

ORIGIN: Forty-three years after Frankie was shot, killed, and buried, a powerful and villainous mage known as Abra Merlin attempted to resurrect Frankie using a hodge-podge of mostly forgotten necromancy. The ceremonies worked, sort of. Frankie’s skeleton rose from its coffin, but he lacked the ability to speak. Abra Merlin commanded Frankie to show him where the MGFN-Mark 3 was hidden. Frankie found that he could not resist the command. Unfortunately for the mage, Frankie had retained his sense of honor after death and instinctively knew that the mage had dastardly intentions for the trigger. When Frankie finally grasped the device, he held it out to Abra Merlin and then violently smashed it to the ground.

The resultant release of alien energy, the trace residue of anti-matter particles on the device, and the proximity of Abra Merlin’s old world magic had a profound effect on Frankie. In the small explosion that accompanied the destruction of the trigger, the two gemstones were lodged in his eye sockets. Apparently, Abra Merlin was destroyed in the blast, though his body was never found. Frankie was much luckier. A combination of the energy from the blast and the power in the stones has made his skeleton stronger and denser than any normal human’s. All of his senses have increased to a marvelous degree. Frankie still eats and drinks, but no one is really sure where the sustenance goes. He also sleeps normally.

Frankie quickly found that his appearance made it difficult to simply pick up his life again, but he was more or less welcomed into the superhero community of Millennium City. He’s had to learn quickly to adapt to the many changes since Detroit was destroyed, but his intimate knowledge of Golden Age supers has made him an asset to more than one client. After a period of adjustment, Frankie eventually opened a new office in Millennium City, catering to anyone who needs a private investigator, but mostly his clients are supers, mutants, and organizations that don’t mind letting other people rummage through dirty laundry.

The first mystery that Frankie solved after his resurrection was the location of his beloved black 1950 Mercury Coupe. When he found it, the car had been restored many times, the latest modification being the additions of a hybrid drive (of which he approved) and pink flames (of which he didn’t). Frankie’s successes over the past few years have finally allowed him to do the car over completely.

EQUIPMENT: